


Beyond Compare

by orphan_account



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Pining, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-26
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-02 06:26:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8654242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: What started as a rebound relationship slowly grows into something much more important for Kara and Lena.





	1. Chapter 1

Kara felt the bedsheets slip away from her, as they always did around 2 a.m. when Lena Luthor, in her sleep, became a blanket hog.  The air in the room was cooler than Kara liked and its faint chill moved softly across her skin.  Kara turned over, shifted closer to Lena’s warmth, and sighed, trying to tug back the sheets softly enough that she wouldn’t wake her.  

This had been going on for about three months.  Kara tried to tell herself as she looked at the strong grace in Lena’s shoulder blades, that she wasn’t comparing them to Cat’s.  That when she idly traced her fingers over them, that she wasn’t flashing back, ever so briefly, to the play of wiry little muscles just beneath the skin of the Queen of All Media.  Lena wasn’t a replacement Cat, exactly, but Kara still caught herself, even in moments like now, missing Cat’s tart tongue, her slightly-too-rough kisses, her obnoxiously rarefied tastes.

Because under all of that, Kara had known Cat’s heart.  She knew all the affection she’d been denied by her mother, by her ex-husband.  She knew that Cat loved the world, wanted to change it for the better.  Kara had been anchored by Cat, shepherded, as both Kara and Supergirl.  Cat had made her a better person, a better hero.   

How could she possibly ask Lena to compete with that?

 _But I’m not,_ she reminded herself as she drew in closer and breathed the honeyed scent of Lena’s hair. _It’s just that comparisons from one lover to the next are inevitable._  

She and Lena had gotten into a habit of going places together under the auspices of Lena not wanting to show up unaccompanied at corporate-sponsored events, which was how she and Cat had begun, too.  One night, after an opulent benefit dinner, Lena kissed her in the limousine afterward.  Kara liked being kissed again, liked Lena’s soft lips and her perfume and the low, seductive murmuring she’d do in between kisses.  Those kisses, they were still the same, three months hence; they were sweet enough, pleasant, but she could feel Lena already thinking three moves ahead, considering how best to maneuver her into bed.  Yet strangely, they lacked the urgency that had always accompanied kissing Cat; every breath had felt like it might be their last, every moment felt as precious as the next.  

It was just different, that was all.  Not better or worse.

“Stop sighing,” Lena grumbled through a thick curtain of half-sleep.

Kara smiled wryly.  Lena could feel it when Kara was awake, thinking herself in circles.  She kissed Lena’s shoulder.  “Sorry.”

The problem was that it happened often.  Kara struggled to relax and drift off in Lena’s bed.  She never felt quite … safe.  For all of Cat’s flaws, her pettiness, her demanding nature, Kara knew that Cat also felt disposed to protect Kara, and Supergirl, in ways that nobody did.  Nobody knew what motivated Lena Luthor, least of all Kara, and they had been sleeping together for three months.

Lena turned over and kissed Kara’s mouth, which had inverted itself into a gentle frown.  “Look,” she sighed sleepily, “I know what Cat meant to you.  I know you wish she’d given you a better reason for why she left.  And I know this… you and me... started a lot faster than either of us planned.  So, I’m willing to leave you some room to pine over her.  I get it.  But… I wish you’d give me more of a chance.  I’m not so bad, you know.”

“I know,” Kara sighed, and kissed her again.  She liked the way Lena looked with her makeup off in the middle of the night.  “I’m trying.” 

It was inescapable though.  On the surface, they were similar; polished, poised, powerful women in charge of staggeringly large companies.  But the more Kara dug, the more the differences laid themselves out.  Where Cat was acerbic, Lena was demure.  Where Cat was fair, Lena was dark.  Where Cat was clear and bold, Lena was grey.  Cat had never confronted her about being Supergirl after that one time, but Kara knew that Cat knew.  She had to.  It colored everything about their interactions, their intimacy.  Sadly, ironically, Cat had found it easier to say what she needed to about their parting to Supergirl than she had to Kara.  But when push came to shove, Kara trusted Cat.  With her identity, with her heart, with her life. 

Lena had no such access to that secret.  Nor, Kara decided as she lay in bed beside her, would she have such access for quite some time.

Lena’s fingers traced over Kara’s lips, and she smiled in that way that left Kara feeling uneasy and empty.  “I know.  I do like you, you know.”

Kara quietly urged them into that muted, slow, middle of the night sex that they sometimes had, when they were both awake but had run out of things to say.  She stroked Lena’s skin and listened to her sighing and enjoyed the little bursts of naughty talk for what they were (Cat had never been a talker, not like that).  Lena’s voice when it was low and soft and saying dirty things had a way of temporarily erasing thoughts from Kara’s mind.  And when they came together, within a few moments of each other, trembling and breathing hard, Kara was able to dwell in that for a few minutes as they held each other, and then disengaged and redistributed the bedding so that it was fair again.  

But she couldn’t help it.  She didn’t love Lena, and didn’t know if she ever would.  But she had loved Cat, and knew that Cat had loved her.  And that alone made her beyond compare. 

“Goodnight, Kara.”

She absently stroked Lena’s back.  “Goodnight.”


	2. Chapter 2

Kara sat curled around Lena, her chin on Lena’s shoulder, looking past her, out at the wine-dark ocean.  Rain beat against the floor to ceiling windows of the beach house, as it had been doing all day.  “I promise you this is really unusual.  Storms like this normally pass quickly,” Lena grumbled, leaning back against her.

Kara nibbled at her ear.  “Well, at least we had good weather the first few days.”   


They’d been sunbathing nude on the private beach those first few days and Lena’s pale skin had been kissed a warm amber by the Hawaiian sun.  She left her hair undone and let the sun and breeze and salt water burnish the colors and textures of her face and body to something softer, less severe.  She was beautiful when she was glamorous, but dressed down and relaxed, she sparkled like sun on the sea.  Kara decided she preferred her that way.

It was a funny thing, she reflected, as they sat curled together, Lena drinking tea, listening to the rain.  This long weekend away had been a spontaneous idea of Lena’s, one she’d suggested with a great deal of relish and a twinkle of mischief in her eye.  Maybe it was the twenty-five extra years that Cat had had to get used to obscene wealth, but her extravangances were taken for granted.  She didn’t seem to find any irony or take any joy in them.  Lena seemed self-aware of how absurd her lifestyle was, seemed to take some joy in the fact that it was ridiculous that she had a private beach house in Kai’alaui, and a private jet to take her there, and a pretty girl to bring with her.  When she proposed that they run off, she was smirking, as if she were somehow up to no good.  Kara had to admit it was infectious.

Her text alert went off.  Sighing, she craned her neck to see who it was. 

“Who is it?”  Lena asked, yawning and leaning further back into Kara’s arms.

She smelled fresh.  Like the beach.  The chestnut waves of her hair were kissed with paler highlights and were coarse and wild.  “My mom,” she answered.

“You seem to have a lovely relationship,” Lena sighed.  Her voice had a wistful edge.  It left unsaid the tangles of hurtful words that bound Lena and her mother together, for better or worse, and mostly, it seemed to Kara, for worse.   


Kara smiled sadly.  “I was lucky,” she answered after a moment.  “I wound up with…”  She paused.  Lena, despite their thorny relationship, was fiercely defensive of her mother.  “...a family that was the right fit.”

Lena chuckled a little and twisted around.  She kissed Kara lightly.  “It’s alright.  My mother has… unusual ways of showing her love.”

Kara nodded and said nothing more.  They both tended to be circumspect when discussing their family lives, Kara to protect her secrets, and Lena to protect her own.  Yet they both intuitively understood that they did this.  It had crept up on Kara that this created its own sort of strange kinship.  They respected each other’s secrets.  There was something to that.

She batted away the memory of Cat insisting that she reveal herself.   


Kara drew Lena close and kissed her, harder than she meant to, but Lena didn’t seem to mind.  Soon enough, they were slipping out of the silk robes they’d been lounging in, and Kara was pushing Lena down on her back on the couch.  Kara was in a mood to take control of things, and Lena was in a mood to let her, except that it didn’t much feel like she was “letting her.”  It didn’t feel like something that needed to be negotiated.  Kara enjoyed moments like these.  They felt natural.  She wanted to brush her fingers over Lena’s soft skin and taste the tendons of her neck, the ridges of her collarbones, and Lena wanted her to do that.  Kara decided how long to linger on the flat plane of Lena’s stomach and the taut pink of her nipples.  Kara decided when it was time to part Lena’s tanned thighs and tease in between them with the tip of her tongue.  The flood of whispers that elicited made Kara blush, as they did.

Sometimes Lena decided she wanted to steer, and Kara never minded.  Four months in, Lena’s fingers had learned their way around and knew what Kara liked.  In fact, in the last few days here, they’d discovered a shared kink when Lena came up behind her in the hallway and began stroking her in front of the large mirror in the foyer.  Kara was embarrassed to look at first, but Lena had encouraged her and Kara had to admit that they looked beautiful together.  Dark and light, grace and strength; she liked the ways that their perfect silhouettes wrapped around each other in the fading daylight. The sight of Lena's fingers touching her so intimately made her heart pound, and the unchecked arousal in both of their faces was lurid and sweet.   


But today was not that.  Today was Kara, exploring Lena’s body thoroughly and, she was surprised to find, hungrily, and with authority.  “Come for me,” she rasped, licking her with furious abandon.   And Lena did, twice, shivering with delight on the couch.  She was soaked, and tasted like the ocean.   


Later, they played a game of Scrabble that Lena had dug out of a dusty closet, and then Kara cooked dinner.  They’d gotten fresh fish that morning out at the market on the island, and she grilled it and made a salsa with mangoes and pineapples.  They argued a little about whether Elton John should have stopped making records 30 years ago and Lena whipped out her phone, plugged it into the stereo system and played some killer live version of “Crocodile Rock” from 1979.  “Tell me he’s ever been better than that,” she demanded triumphantly.

Kara tried to make a case for the Lion King soundtrack but she knew Lena was right.

They flew back the next day on Lena’s jet and caught a few winks with their heads resting on each other.  The empty space between them was filling with something like friendship, she realized, if not the epic passion Kara thought she craved.   


And it occurred to her that she had only been aware of thinking about Cat once. Maybe twice.


	3. Chapter 3

It was still strange to actually date someone.  To have stretches of time in which they didn’t see one another, whole days, and then actually call or text each other to make plans.  That had never been how it was with Cat.   She had spent day in, day out with Cat, tethered to her side, and when Cat wanted her to stay late, she would stay late.  When Cat wanted her to come home with her, she’d come home with her.  When Cat wanted her on her hands and knees in front of her, that was where she’d be.  Cat was a blazing golden sun whose gravity had clasped Kara, like a little pod, firmly in her orbit, and drew her into her molten heart.  Her love for Cat had been a crucible.  She took Kara and made her walk through fire, and changed her when she was through.  Cat broke her down, craving her unconditional submission, and then when she gave it, Cat built her back up.  Pushed her.  Demanded that she be strong.  Stronger.  It was no kind of romance that she had ever been taught to expect but it had set her on fire.    


And then it was gone.  Just like that.  Loneliness didn’t begin to cover it.  She felt empty.  Because the fucking sun had been torn out of her sky without so much as a by your leave.

She would never have pursued Lena in that miserable state.  But Lena, all smoky glances and silvery moonlight, brimmed with invitation.  It mitigated the wrenching sense of loss only a little, but a little was better than not at all.

And now, five months in, Lena didn’t mind spending the night at Kara’s place sometimes.  Cat never did that in the year and a half that they were… whatever they were to each other.  Lena appreciated the airy loft space, the hip neighborhood, Kara’s DIY furniture.  She had ideas about what sort of mural Kara should paint on that one blank white wall over the bed.  She seemed genuinely turned on by the fact that Kara could refinish a coffee table with her own two hands and could paint, and understood color theory.  She was perfectly happy to binge watch “Friends.”    


And what was more, her sister Alex approved.  “I don’t know what it is you with you and these rich women,” she snarked, “but I like this one better.”

“Why,” Kara had shot back defensively, “because she’s my age?”

“Yeah, and she’s not your boss.”

Tonight Lena and Kara paused after having finished a run of about four episodes.  It was 2 a.m.  Netflix was asking if they wanted to keep going.

“I think I have to stop,” Kara sighed.  “I don’t think I’ll make it through another one.”

Lena agreed.

They turned off the television and slipped into bed.  They spent a few minutes lazily kissing in a way that didn’t seem to be clearly leading anywhere, which was fine.  It didn’t necessarily need to.  But Kara asked after a moment, “Lena?”

“Hm?”

“Why’d you want to date me?”

Lena gave her a pouty smile.  “Come on, really?”

Kara’s brow furrowed.  “Yeah, really.  Rich, powerful women like you… you get to date supermodels, rock singers, actresses.  Why’d you want to date a nobody reporter like me?”

Lena regarded her for a long moment in the low light.  “You were kind to me when it mattered.  When nobody else was.  I wanted to make sure you stuck around.”  She tilted her head and considered Kara for a moment.  “Why’d you say yes?”

Kara smiled.  “I was hurting.  Being with you made me hurt less.”  They exchanged quizzical looks for a beat and then Kara added,  “And also, you know.  You’re super hot.”

Lena laughed, but didn’t argue.  She tangled her fingers in Kara’s, playfully pinned her to the mattress.  Lena wasn’t always a biter, but tonight she was like a kitten with a face full of catnip, wild and a bit silly, and she made quick work of Kara.  Kara was glad.  It felt good, and it meant they didn’t have to talk about feelings anymore right then.   
  


 

Kara still felt lonely, still felt empty, like she had lost the guiding star around which her life had been focused.  But the emptiness hurt less.  She had Lena to share it with.  Lena, so guarded and secretive thanks to the weight of her family name that lay heavy on her shoulders, was actually better company than most for the daughter of Krypton, burdened as she was with her own family’s legacy; brutal judgments exacted by her mother, deadly biological weapons from her father.  Kara never pried about Lex or Lillian Luthor, but their own trail of bigotry and violence was documented well enough.  Lena never talked much about it, but the shared knowledge was enough.

And space and quiet were  becoming good friends of hers, too.  Kara spent a lot of time in her own mind, working out who she was now, on the other side of the bonfire that was her relationship with Cat Grant.  She felt like she was starting to figure that out, slowly.

One Saturday morning, as she was making breakfast (an enormous stack of pancakes), her phone pinged.  It was an email from Cat.  Her eyes swam for several minutes, trying to comprehend what she was seeing.  Finally, she read it:

 

_ Kara, _

_ I’m enjoying London, but not the weather.  I hear from Snapper that you’re progressing well and I’m pleased to hear it.  _

_ I suppose I’ll get to the point.  I felt I owed you a better explanation for why I ended things, and it’s this: you were an indulgence that I was wrong to ever afford myself.  We could never have worked in the long term and I think you know that, even if you don’t want to accept it right now.  I took you, made you mine, made you into everything I wanted.  I told myself it was loving you, but I was loving what I had made you into.  I never really had the right to do that, to own you so completely.  Your sweetness, your willingness to bend so completely to my needs and desires, it burned like a drug in my veins.  It’s why I went so far away; I can’t trust myself to be near you, and I know that if I call you, you’ll still come to me. _

_ I hope I was able to teach you something; about journalism, about life, about strength.  I hope you’re able to touch the power that I know lies inside you, the steel in your heart.  I hope you understand that I left you because I loved you, because you deserve better.  And I hope that if Lena Luthor isn’t that person for you, that you find that person. _

_ Yours, _ _   
_ _ Cat _

 

Kara spent the rest of the morning in a ball on the couch, eyes glazed over, with something playing on the television that she wasn’t even absorbing.  News, maybe.  She cried off and on a few times.  Finally, with numb, cold fingers and a trembling jaw, she tapped out a brief response:   
  


_ Cat, _   
_ I’m rebuilding myself out of the smoking rubble you left.  It’s disruptive and painful to hear from you.  I want you to be okay, but I don’t want to hear from you again until and unless I decide I’m ready to reach out to you.  I hope you can respect that. _


	4. Chapter 4

Christmas was coming in National City.  It always felt a little illusory to Kara without the snow and the snap of cold wind and the occasional smell of fireplaces when she walked outdoors.  Lights strung up on palm trees felt like a little bit of a joke.  But it was still Christmas and she still stood in front of the plate glass windows on the boulevard in the expensive shopping district, trying to decide on a gift for Lena.  It was only half as daunting as shopping for Cat.

They were six months in, now.  Lena had met Kara’s friends and family, drunk their wine, laughed at their jokes.  Lena had taken her golfing once, and it was a bit of a disaster.  They never did find about half of Kara’s balls and she was pretty sure that the ones that didn’t end up in the sand traps had been accidentally shot up into space.  But it was progress, of a kind. 

Journalism agreed with Kara, even if Snapper often didn’t, and she stumbled more than she wished she did, but she knew, from her time at Cat’s side, that challenge was good for her.  It pushed her to rise.  Challenge was good for her, even if Cat wasn’t.

She’d ended up at Lena’s place after she’d gotten that email.  She pushed in the doorway and pressed herself into Lena’s arms, desperately kissing her.  Lena was taken aback at the fervor of her affections but they found their way to the couch.  Kara dropped to her knees and pleaded, “Tell me what you want.” 

Lena looked at her with fond bewilderment and answered, “Just you, Kara.” 

“But how do you want me,” Kara pressed, kissing Lena’s hand, palms, fingertips. 

“You know what I like,” she answered softly.  She placed her hand on Kara’s face. 

“Tell me what do.  Please.”  Her lips trembled.  She ached from having that old wound torn open. 

Lena stopped her, leaned down, and kissed her forehead.  “I want you to fuck me,” she whispered gently, “the way you want to fuck me.  It shows me what you’re feeling.  It tells me where your head is.  It’s how you speak.”

Kara collapsed, sobbing against Lena’s chest.  She couldn’t even mention Cat’s name.  She couldn’t bring herself to do that to Lena anymore. 

“Shall we go to bed?” Lena proposed after several minutes of Kara’s muffled crying.

Kara nodded wordlessly.

Lena didn’t ask, but she had to have some idea what was happening.  They lay together naked, but didn’t have sex right away.  Kara just lay with Lena curled around her, and Lena stroked her shoulder.  It was comforting. 

“I don’t need you to be anything other than what you are,” she said after a long silence. 

Kara was baffled and thrilled at this.  She turned over, facing Lena, and kissed her.  Lena peered at her for a moment.  “I’m not used to that,” she said finally.

“I know.”  And then her hands, those silky, perfect manicured hands, stroked Kara’s body, and Kara let herself be touched, and cared for.  Lena was slow, gentle, making sure she had exhausted the sensual possibilities of each little expanse of skin before moving on to the next.  She insisted that Kara lie back and let herself accept this careful, tender attention.  Kara found herself at moments weeping for how foreign a feeling this was. 

Something opened up between them after that. 

Kara pondered this as she stood in front of a shop window gazing at jewelry that was well out of her price range.  Just a few days ago, Lena let herself cry on Kara’s shoulder.  Kara knew it had something to do with her mother, and though Lena didn’t open up to talk about it, Kara was glad that she could hold her through the worst of it, bring her to bed afterwards, make her come, make her laugh a little.

Lena could buy whatever jewelry she wanted.  It made no sense to be standing here looking at this stuff.  She turned around and headed for home.

 

They exchanged gifts on Christmas Eve.  “Don’t get me anything fancy,” she’d warned Lena.  So, Lena bought her too many things, none of them outrageously expensive on their own, but combined they probably added up to more than Kara wanted to think about.  A cashmere sweater, a box set of the Saturday morning cartoons that Kara had watched when she first arrived on Earth, a new set of acrylic paints that she’d noticed Kara lusting over when they passed an art supply store a few weeks ago.  A stuffed bear from Build-A-Bear that was dressed like Cersei Lannister.  Kara scolded her excess and kissed her, and Lena refused to apologize, and kissed her back.

Kara disappeared and then re-emerged from her closet with two wrapped parcels.  The first was a painting that she’d done.  She’d spent about a week on it.  It was the view of the ocean from Lena’s beach house, which had seared itself into her memory that rainy day they spent looking out of it.  “I don’t know where you’ll put it, but you have plenty of wall space, so…”  She trailed off sheepishly. 

Lena stared at it, her large eyes shining.  “It’s beautiful.”  And it was.  Kara had taken some chances with the pigments, mixing a little silver into the clouds and the water.  Not enough to make it garish and metallic, just enough to give it a faint sheen when the light hit it the right way.

She reached into her pocket and produced another gift, this one very small.  It was in a small, square, black velvet box.  Lena looked at her, incredulous.  “What on earth did you do?” she demanded as she took it.  Kara thought that she saw Lena’s hand tremble a little, but maybe she was imagining things.

Lena flipped the small jewelry box open.  Inside it was a silver door key, and then a larger one that looked like it was for a deadbolt.  Kara’s deadbolt.  She gave Kara a searching look, not wanting to assume what she was being handed.

“Don’t worry,” Kara assured her.  “I’m not asking you to move in or anything.  I just … I thought you should have the keys to my place.  Just in case.”

Lena’s immaculately curved brows drew together.  She pursed her mouth thoughtfully for a moment.  “In case what?”

Kara shrugged.  “In case.”

Lena dropped the box on Kara’s counter and pushed Kara’s skirt up, and had her right there, backed against the wooden butcher block in the kitchen. 

Kara was a reporter.  Kara was a superhero.  Kara was a painter.  And now, six months in, Kara was a woman who gave her girlfriend the keys, in her own time, and on her own terms.


	5. Chapter 5

Supergirl was Kara’s extraordinary self.  She was the physical manifestation of the way she wanted her insides to feel.  Wearing the suit, she was able to shed the messy humanity of her life as Kara, and be heroic.  The savior of National City, with hope literally emblazoned on her chest.  Supergirl had saved Lena Luthor’s life, three times, actually.  The second two were after they’d begun sleeping together.  Fortunately, it had been dark, and she’d made rather hasty departures both times.  James had been right; it had taken a long time for Cat to recognize Kara in Supergirl, because people looked at the hero as something different.  She was never sure that Lena was fooled, though.  She wondered if this was just more of them respecting each other’s privacy.   _How could she not_ _know my touch, my scent?_ she wondered.

Lena waited until a few weeks after Christmas before giving Kara keys to her sprawling place out in the hills and her penthouse uptown.  Their time together became more porous, less planned.  They’d show up to see each other, bearing takeout.  Eliza couldn’t help asking whether things were becoming serious with Lena and Kara didn’t know what to tell her.    


“You seem fond of each other,” her foster mother remarked.

“We are,” Kara answered quickly, because she knew that much was true.    


Kara found that she craved less and less the feeling of being dominated.  Sometimes, though, the weight of her heroism was too much to bear.  She didn’t really explain her troubles, but Lena learned that when Kara was seeming particularly burdened, she liked being told what to do in bed.  It took a bit of feeling their way through, and in the beginning sometimes it was unintentionally hilarious, but she warmed to playing that role for Kara every now and then when she needed it.  The blissful relief that would illuminate Kara’s face was incentive enough for her.  And Kara liked being able to ask for that; to have it be a game, something she requested, instead it being of the state of nature that their relationship existed in.

Kara discovered that when Lena seemed especially strained, sometimes, she liked to be hurt a little.  Kara was nervous at first, afraid to hurt her too much, but they found her limits and stuck to them, and Kara found a delirious rush in the groans that Lena made when Kara struck her ass or twisted her stiff nipples in just the right way.  The way she shook, the way she moaned Kara’s name, the flush that came into her cheeks, made Kara comfortable with it in fairly short order. 

And so they continued.  Learning, learning.  Their patterns became familiar to one another.  And seven months in, Kara was starting to worry that the balance of their intimacy was off kilter.  How could they know such deeply private things in bed, know so much of each other’s moods (and Rao, but Lena could be moody when she wanted), each other’s habits, and yet keep entire swaths of their lives, their selves, closed off from one another?  

Lena took her to a gala at the Crystal Room, down by the waterfront, where the moon splashed itself across the water and the boats glided by almost close enough to touch.  By this time, Kara actually knew a number of Lena’s business acquaintances by sight.  Many were people she’d encountered before, when she was working for Cat.  She greeted them with polite familiarity, complimented them on their latest pet projects if she knew what they were, and sparkled at Lena’s side all evening with a glass of champagne in hand, except for those moments where she slipped away to waylay a passing tray of high-end potstickers.  She swore that one tray actually had foie gras or something in them.    


She was having a fine enough time, but she was ill at ease by the time they got into the limousine at the end of the night.  Lena was looking out at the boats as the engine rumbled softly to life.  “Kara,” she chided.  “I can hear your frown.  What’s wrong?”

Kara sighed heavily.  “Eliza asked me if you and I were getting serious.”

Lena turned to face her.  Her hair was swept up and her neck looked impossibly long and she was that kind of glamorous tonight that made Kara feel fortunate to be with her, but a little intimidated too.  “What did you tell her?”  Her tone and expression were carefully neutral, but she leaned forward curiously.

Kara hesitated.  “I… I didn’t know what to say.”

“Why not?”

“Because we don’t really know each other, do we.  I mean, you don’t talk about things.”

“Neither do you.  I thought we liked it that way.”  There was worry in her look now, as she shifted closer to Kara across the soft leather seat.

Kara bit her lip.  “I just…”  She struggled. 

Lena took her hand.  “Look at where we are,” she told her softly, gesturing out the water, at the the glittering structure of the Crystal Room, the jewel of the piers.  “Look at us in our beautiful dresses.  Look at the night we just had.”  Kara could see in the dark that Lena’s eyes were getting glossy.  “Isn’t this good?  Just the way it is?”

“Of course it is,” Kara sighed. She didn’t even know, really, what she was asking for.  The two of them revealing their respective truths would complicate things so much.  How could they possibly have this relaxed, easy thing they were having once it was acknowledged between them that Lena’s mother was bent on killing her?  Let alone whatever else Lena was holding back?  Everything would become complicated.  Who knew whether Lena would even feel the same way about her once she learned what she really was.  Whether she would feel the sting of betrayal at being lied to for seven months.

Kara floundered for a moment more and then settled on, “I guess I just didn’t know how you felt about me.  About … all this.”

Lena looked at her with disbelief and clasped both her hands.  “Do you really not know?”  And she kissed her deeply, squeezing her hands, holding onto them as if she was afraid of blowing away.

Kara kissed her back, remembering the breadth of their time together; first kisses, first dinners, easy nights at one’s home or the other, the away weekend, the way Lena remembered what Kara liked to drink, her favorite shows, the names of her friends, the way she liked to be touched after a long day.  Kara came up for air after what felt like several minutes.  She smiled wryly.  “I guess… you know… because of the way we started…”

Lena nodded, and stroked Kara’s cheek.  “I know we both got into this for some of the wrong reasons, but… I like to think we stayed for some of the right ones.”

And maybe that was true.  Kara was still not satisfied.  But she let the matter drop, because she needed to get some clarity.  The wound that Cat had left was closed, at least enough that it no longer crippled her.  She needed to take stock of where she was now.  They rode back to Lena’s place in the hills, kissing hotly all the way there.  They had sex in the hot tub, and then again in Lena’s large bed with the expensive, perfumed sheets, in her room overlooking the carpet of twinkling lights that was National City.    


After Lena fell asleep, Kara lay awake, periodically sighing.  She suspected that she loved Lena, but couldn’t shake the feeling that it was incomplete.  And she suspected that Lena loved her too, but how could she truly do so when the most extraordinary part of Kara Danvers was still walled off?  The symbol on Supergirl’s chest meant hope, but the heart that beat beneath it was full of doubt.


	6. Chapter 6

Kara sat with the phone in her hand for a long while before dialing.  Her fingers trembled as she punched in the numbers and waited, listening to the little gurgling ringtone.    


“Kara?”

“Yeah.”

A long, surprised silence.  “It’s good to hear from you.”

“I heard you’re buying Xinwei News, congratulations.”

Cat scoffed, the way she did.  Exactly the way Kara remembered.  “That can’t be why you’ve called me.”

Kara released a long, slow sigh.  “Cat… I… I need advice.  And for all the things that were wrong with our relationship, and there were many–”  She could hear Cat wincing at the truth of that.  “–nobody else knows me the way you did.  By the end of it, we knew each other inside and out.  It might be the only thing we did right, but…”  She trailed off.

Cat sounded weary.  “And your question is?”

“Is that why we worked?  Even though we didn't, really?  I mean, it was … Pretty unhealthy, and it would have been good if you-”  She stopped short.  This wasn't about recriminations with Cat.  “We knew everything about each other.  Good and bad.”   _ God, Cat, how I knew you.  It was like loving a hurricane. _

“Mm, yes, that's sort of what intimacy is, Kara.”

She fretted for a moment.  “Lena holds a lot back.  And so do I.  It's so good, what we have, in so many ways, but there's certain things that we don’t share and-”

“You mean you haven't told her you're Supergirl,” Cat interrupted.

“You always knew that,” Kara whispered.    


“Of course.  That's why I tried to push you in ways that would benefit you as Kara and as Supergirl.”

Kara let that comment lay between them, afraid to touch it.  So much pushing, pushing… And not all of it had been bad.  But there had been so much.  More than a lover should ever do.  She forged on.  “Anyway yeah, I haven't.”

“Do you think she knows?”

“I… I don't know.”

“Have you rescued her?”

“Yes.”

“Then she knows.  I know the Luthors, you can say a lot of things about them but they're not stupid.”

Kara knew that Cat was probably right about this.  “Why did you let me have that, even though you knew?”

Cat sighed.  “It was clear that you needed it.  I knew even then I was taking too much.  When you showed me that you were willing to lose everything between us rather than share it, I had to drop it.  I needed you as much as you needed me.”

Kara paused for a moment while she digested that.  Cat had capitulated?  To her?

“You see?”  Cat prodded.  “You were always stronger than you realized.”

It was exhausting, hearing Cat’s voice.  Even when she was saying something important.  “I don’t know what to do, Cat.”

“It doesn’t strike you as a little off that you’re calling me for advice about your new lover?”

“No,” Kara answered, her tone blunt.  “Given the way you ended things, making that decision for me and not explaining why?  I think you owe me that.”  She softened, then.  “And...your advice was always good.”

Cat’s breathing filled the space between them as she absorbed Kara’s words.  “Alright.  So.  You don’t want to keep going like you’re going.  As healthy as this thing might be, you can’t have intimacy without the truth and that’s the one thing you’re not giving her.”   _ The one thing you and I had _ , lay unspoken in the pause after that.    


“Well, she’s not either,”  Kara protested.

“Why would you expect her to open up to you if she’s pretty sure you’re lying to her about something that big?”

Kara was struck dumb.  It was so obvious.

“So,”  Cat continued, her tone become brisk and crackling with that familiar energy, “it appears to me that you have two choices, if you don’t want to just keep riding this out.  You end it.  Or, you put on your big girl pants, tell her the truth, and deal with the fallout.”

Kara groaned.  Of course those were her choices.  Both sounded terrible.  


“Look,” Cat scolded, sounding just like her old self.  “Do you love this girl, or what?  Wait, no, don’t tell me, I don’t want to hear about it.  But if you do, or you think you do, then you need to lay it out to her, tell her everything.  Stop protecting yourself.  You’re already vulnerable, I can hear it in your voice.  For Christ’s sake, Kara, do it right.”

Cat’s voice broke a little at the end in a way that only Kara would notice.  Kara felt something hot well up in her chest, behind her eyes.  She heard everything Cat wasn’t saying:   _ I love you, I’m sorry, don’t let the disaster that was Us have been for nothing, find something healthy, fall in love the way you deserve. _

An exaggerated sigh.  “Ugh, I can practically hear your mouth hanging open.  Go!  Do what you have to do!  I’m busy!”

“Thanks, Cat,” Kara whispered, and she hung up.  A tear rolled down her cheek.  She knew Cat was probably crying on the other side of the pond right now.  The things she loved about Cat, she realized, she always would.  A part of her would always miss those things.  Most of all, her clarity.  But Kara knew, her future wasn’t with Cat.  She wasn’t sure it was with Lena, either, but she knew now that there was only one way to find out.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Typical of the way Kara’s life tended to unfold, the moment she revealed herself to Lena wasn’t one she chose.  Rather, it chose her.  They were exiting a favorite sushi restaurant that they frequented, heading toward the boulevard to do a bit of wandering.  The department stores were putting up Valentine’s Day displays a bit early and some of them were almost better than Christmas.  When they had time, they enjoyed strolling after dinner, fingers loosely entangled, chatting easily about movies, music, art.  Kara had lots of gaps in her knowledge, being at a thirteen year disadvantage, but her enthusiasm for those subjects helped a great deal.  Lena wasn’t an artist but she had an eye, and understood composition, and knew a fair bit of art history.  Kara was only an amateur painter with good instincts, and she loved Lena’s more cultured perspective on art.

It was unusually cold for National City, even in late January, and they both wore gloves and jackets, their breath converging in little clouds in front of them as they laughed. The window of Roman’s was decked out with a Japanese theme, lots of red silk and a mass of paired cranes, swirling delicately in the updraft of an unseen fan.  Lena commented on her fondness for the paired cranes, the symbol of love and loyalty, and Kara felt moved to snap a few shots of her in front of the display.  So Lena stood in front of the window.  Kara backed off a bit to catch her silhouette in the space created by two billowing sheets of red silk, making sure to frame a few of the cranes in shot.  The backlighting from the window was a little annoying but she could work with it.  It made a dramatic tableau.    


So focused was she on framing her shot that she noticed later than she would have liked that a garbage truck that had been barrelling down the street slipped on a patch of black ice and spun out of control.  National City and its drivers were ill suited to the weather conditions, and the truck slammed into a telephone pole, which began a slow-motion descent toward Lena, trailing a shower of sparks behind it.

This was not how she wanted this to go.

In a split second, she was standing with her arms around Lena, ten feet from where the pole landed.  It sat, spitting sparks, in the place on the sidewalk where Lena had been just a half moment before.  She could feel Lena shaking with fright, could hear her heartbeat, louder than drums.  Lena was staring at her with wide, wet eyes for a long moment.  Kara looked at her expectantly, terrified of what might happen next. 

After a long moment of shock, Kara spoke first.  “Are you alright?”

Lena nodded silently, gazing at Kara’s face with a riot of emotions on her face.  “I suppose you have something you’d like to tell me,” she said slowly, after several more moments.

Already, sirens wailed their approach to the scene.

“Lena,” she sighed, her voice straining with regret, “this wasn’t the way I wanted to tell you.  But I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while.”

Lena’s lip trembled a little.  “Please, take me home.”

Kara started to walk out to hail a taxi but Lena grabbed her arm.  “Not like that,” she said softly.    


Kara stared at her for a moment before comprehending her meaning.  “Are you sure?”

“I’m not afraid of heights.”

Kara nodded and wrapped her arms around Lena’s waist.  She wondered if she was going to be able to hold her like this again.  She lifted them into the air, gently floating them over the tops of the sparkling buildings.  They didn’t speak the whole way there.  They just held onto each other, drifting softly toward Lena’s penthouse.  They entered through the balcony, and Kara set her down with great care.

“Lena,” she began uncertainly.

“I knew,” Lena interrupted.  “I didn’t want to know, but I knew.”

“Lena, this doesn’t change how I feel about you.  I’m still the same person you’ve been spending all of this time with.  I’m still human.”  Kara paused, correcting herself.  “I mean, I’m not, but … my feelings are as human as yours.”

Lena gave her a wry, pained smile.  “I know, Kara.  But I had plausible deniability before.  I can’t know this about you.  It makes us both vulnerable.  And I don’t mean emotionally vulnerable, I mean, legitimate physical danger.”  She gave a harsh little chuckle.  “You think my mother wanted to kill Supergirl before, imagine what she’d want to do if she found out I was sleeping with her.”

“Don’t call it that,” Kara interjected.  “We… Lena, I don’t care about the danger.  I’m not just sleeping with you, I care about you.  I love seeing you, I love talking to you, I love making love to you…”  She paused, remembering Cat’s words.   _ Lay it out, tell her everything.  Stop protecting yourself. _

Lena’s face had that look that Kara had seen before, when she felt that someone had cut her to the quick.  “Kara, be careful, please…”  she whispered.

“Lena,” she charged on recklessly.  “I think I’m in love with you.  You know everything about me now, and I want to know everything about you.  We have the makings of something real, here.  We’re so close, don’t you see?”  Kara’s stomach was spinning in place and she was almost shaking as badly as Lena was, but she couldn’t stop herself.  She felt a strange relief in articulating all of this, despite her fears that Lena wouldn’t reciprocate, or would end things because of how complicated things were now.    


Lena was shaking her head.  “Kara, how can we…”

Kara put her arms around Lena’s waist again.  “We’ll figure it out,” she whispered.  “If you want to, I know that we can figure it out.”  She breathed in the smells of almond and vanilla on Lena’s skin, drew her closer, kissed her softly.  Lena trembled harder, and a small moan escaped her lips.  “Tell me you don’t feel the same way about me, and I’ll let go.  Tell me this doesn’t feel right, and I won’t ask you for anything more.”

But Lena kissed her again, and answered, “I do… I do feel the same way.  But it’s…”    


“The buts don’t matter.  It just matters that you feel the same way about me.”  They were kissing each other passionately now, and Kara was mumbling in between kisses, “If you love me, or you even think you do, then the complications don’t matter.”

“I’ve let you get closer and closer,” Lena answered, her voice wavering, “I couldn’t help it.  I knew it was going to come to this but I couldn’t help it.”

It was all Kara needed to hear.  She swept Lena up in her arms.  “I’m taking you to bed,” she whispered, “and I’m going to make love to you, and we’ll untangle everything else later.”

Lena nodded and kissed her, and kissed her some more as Kara carried her to the bedroom.

They collided in that bed, their bodies reaffirming the connection that their hearts had long been forging in spite of themselves, in spite of their circumstances, in spite of everything that stood between them having something.    


“This is real,” Kara whispered as she undressed Lena, worshiping every inch of skin as she bared it.    


“Yes,” Lena whispered back, tangling her fingers in Kara’s hair.    


“Tell me what you want,” Kara whispered. 

“You,” Lena whispered back, moving against Kara’s body, trying to have every inch of Kara’s skin with every inch of hers.  “I want  _ you _ .”

 


	8. Chapter 8

The days and weeks that followed Kara’s revelation were raw and draining.  Every moment not spent working or superheroing was spent hashing through it all.  They spent hours upon hours talking, crying, making love, negotiating.   _ What will you do when she comes after you again?  What will you do if she comes after me?  How do we protect ourselves?  How do we protect each other? _

They finally talked about their families, the grief of missing their birth families, the pain of being in a foster family where they never quite belonged.  The Luthor family fostered Lena’s brilliance but she never felt safe in that home, and as a child she often slept with a kitchen knife under her pillow because Lionel Luthor terrified her.  Kara had her own stories of loss and pain, but that knowledge broke her heart.  Kara had never felt that way in the Danvers home. 

They went at the whole thing as if their hearts were houses and they were trying to strip all the copper wire out of the walls.  Long nights they spent, emptying their souls and memories of everything.

Kara was determined to learn everything about Lena but was interested to note that the process of negotiating these new waters was teaching her about herself; what she did and did not need, what she would and would not accept.  She decided that she did need to hear Lena say that she loved her.  That was hard.  Lena kept high walls.  But Kara needed it, so Lena did it.

They fought a lot about Lena’s business.  She was quite arguably a genius, and her company did groundbreaking chemical and biomedical research and created tech that made the world better.  But Lena was not above making morally grey deals with shady oligarchs, and potentates with questionable human rights records, if they had what she needed to get the work done.  L Corp employed a small paramilitary force to protect certain interests in far flung, dangerous territories.  Kara didn't even need to say out loud how uncomfortable she was with that.

“I'm not my mother!” Lena exclaimed defensively.

“You do have your own army.”

“It's not an army!  It's a security force.  And just because I have it, it doesn't mean I'm going to use it the same way she does.”

“How many troops?”

Awkward pause.  “Two thousand, give or take.”

“Army.”

“Kara!  Do you have any idea how dangerous the Congo is right now?  How unpopular the government is?”

“Well, maybe you shouldn't be dealing with them.”

“I can’t have the litrium mined anywhere else because nobody’s found it anywhere else.  Kara, I’m  _ this _ close to a radiation-free X-ray technology!”

It was not an issue that would resolve itself easily or quickly.  Kara made Lena promise to never ask her to intervene in any of these places on her behalf.  It was the best they could do without Lena abandoning her work there, and she made it clear that that would never happen.

They fought for a week about Lena’s development of alien detection technology.

“Has being with me not taught you anything?” Kara demanded, frustrated.

Lena protested.  “But they’re not all like you!”   


Kara felt a searing pain in her chest.  “You did not just literally tell me I’m one of the good ones,” she fumed.  She felt angry, othered, and spelled that out for Lena as clearly as she knew how.  “Humans commit crimes too, in case you forgot,” she needled.  “It's like creating tech to tell whether someone is gay or not!  You have no right to out someone that way!”

For Lena, the analogy brought back unpleasant memories of Lex ruthlessly extorting her for years when they were teenagers, after he caught her kissing a girl.    


Kara took Lena to the alien bar that she frequented with Alex, Maggie and Mon-El.  “They’re just people.  This could be any dive bar in town,”  Lena observed with wonderment.

They compromised.  She stopped development for consumer use and focused on a unit for use in high-security situations.  Kara wasn’t happy, not entirely, but decided for now that she could live with it.

Fortunately, it wasn’t all thorns and angst.  Lena was deeply intrigued at what it was like to bed a superhero.  She wanted to be pinned to the bed with overwhelming displays of strength, and carried and tossed about.  She wanted to know how quick Kara’s tongue could be.  She wanted to be spirited up into the low hanging clouds above the city, her legs wrapped tight around Kara’s waist, while Kara slipped a careful finger in and gently fucked her, suspended in the still, cool, quiet air.  “Do you mean to tell me,” Lena demanded, panting against Kara’s neck, “ we could have been doing this all along?”

It was taxing, vexing, in a way that only true intimacy could be.  But in between their wrangling and their late night soul-baring and their sometimes desperate lovemaking, they shared moments of simply being themselves together.  Of existing quietly together in a naked, unvarnished honesty.  That, she thought, was sweeter even than their moments of passion.  Curling up at the end of a day on one or the other’s couch, drinking wine and talking about their days without having to leave anything out.

Kara took some heart in the simple fact that this was possible for her: that she was someone strong enough to handle intimacy, someone who knew her own mind and her own needs well enough to be an equal in a relationship, instead of the girl who needed to be possessed by a lover who would tell her what to do.  That she was a participant instead of a spectator in the love story unfolding before her.

 

Late one night, after the kind of slow, sweet, easy sex they used to have before, Kara lifted her head from the pillow of Lena’s chest and asked, “What if I have to kill her?  I mean, I'll try not to, but what if I have to?”

“Who?”

“Who do you think?”

Lena never liked talking about her mother.  Her face darkened, then went strangely blank. “She started a war.  Sometimes people die in war.”

“But some part of you still wants her to love you.  Wants her to be proud of you.  I know that.”

“If it comes to that,” Lena sighed, not looking her in the eye, “I won’t hold it against you if you do what you have to do.”

But it never did come to that.  Cadmus would be dismantled and Lillian Luthor jailed through a DEO operation that Kara wasn't even directly involved with.  (Kara would later learn that Alex excluded her due to the concerns about her “conflict of interest”.)

Kara wished she had to wrestle with Lena’s moral compass less often.  Lena smiled wryly.  “I’m not evil enough for my mother, but I’m not good enough for you.  Sometimes I use less than perfect means to achieve a greater good.”    


And ten months in, it was prickly and tender, but it was working.  Lena loved her, and was honest with her, and Kara couldn’t ask for more than that, she supposed.  And they were both willing to fight for what they had between them.  And they held each other hard, and loved each other black and blue.  

 

 


	9. Epilogue

Kara sat across from Lena at the small wrought iron table on the terrace of the penthouse where they’d eaten countless breakfasts together over the last ten years.  They were both older now, but Lena was somehow becoming more beautiful.  The little lines, the little crinkles around her eyes when she smiled, were a written history of everything the two of them had shared, good and bad.   


It had been complicated; they had parted ways three times in ten years.  They were still parted now.  Lena left mostly because of guilt, Kara left mostly out of anger.  This most recent time, she’d caught Lena lying to her about her dealings with a Middle Eastern dictator, and she left.  Transparency was never Lena’s strong suit.  They worked at it.  They were still working at it.

They managed well enough without each other.  Kara was telling meatier stories at the Tribune.  She was still protecting National City and Earth, when it was needed.  And she still, despite being nearly thirty-five, called herself Supergirl.  It was part of Cat’s legacy, the duty she felt to keep girls from feeling ashamed to be girls.   


Even when they’d been separated, they called on each other’s strength, each other’s skills.  Even when they weren’t together, they still needed each other.  They took the time grow separately, but their roots ran deep and were intimately connected.  Inevitably, the gravity well created by their shared history would always pull them back to each other.

“I’ve missed you,” Lena told her as she slid a gin and tonic across the table to her.  She wasn’t wistful.  Wasn’t expecting anything.  She was simply smiling, that beautiful, warm, familiar smile.  The smile of someone who knew Kara best and was pleased to be with her.

“Me too,” Kara admitted.  It was no shame.  They loved each other and always would, whether they were lovers at the moment or not.

“So?  What do you say?  Ready to hang up the cape?”  Kara had joked that as long as she was the hero of National City, she couldn’t possibly be with someone as questionable as Lena Luthor.

“Nope,” Kara answered cheerfully.  “You ready to sell off L Corp?”

“Nope.” 

Kara took her hand across the table.  “So, what do we do with each other?”

Their love had been built on rocky ground, and sometimes the foundations shook, but it was strong, even now.  Lena kissed the back of her hand.  “I can think of something,” she murmured, her eyes twinkling.

Kara felt that old tug in her belly.  It had been four months.  Her skin had missed Lena’s.  Her mouth twitched with kisses unkissed that had saved themselves for Lena’s lips.  Lena wanted to go to bed and Kara wasn’t much in the mood to resist.  But she gave a rueful smile.  “That sounds… wonderful, Lena but… I don’t want to do that unless we’re going to try this again.”

“Try what?”

“This.  Us.”

Lena kissed her hand once more.  “Think you can tolerate me?”

Kara shook her head, grinning.  “Probably not.”  She drew their clasped hands closer to herself and kissed Lena’s.

Lena gazed at her with such tenderness.  She wore no makeup tonight, because she knew Kara preferred her that way.  “Kara,” she said, her voice warm and velvety, “I know you don't approve of some of the things I do, but consider this: I've never hurt you, not once in ten years have I used what I know against you.  I've always protected you.  And I've kept that promise I made back when.  I've never involved you in anything that you weren't alright with.  Isn’t that worth some trust?  After all this time?”

Kara frowned.  “I do trust you, Lena.”

“Then take me as I am.”  Lena took her other hand now and leaned in.  “Kara, you’re so good.  You’re  _ so, so _ good.  I could never be that good.  You trust me, and you trust that I won’t hurt you.  Can that be good enough?”

For years they’d struggled, and over the years, they had grown and stretched.  She’d watched the people around her grow and settle into themselves.  Alex had moved in with Maggie Sawyer a few years ago.  James had finally let go of his impossible ideas about love and mended things with Lucy.  Even Cat, now that her son was grown, had settled down, come back to the States, and found herself a relationship that she didn’t need to control so tightly.   


Lena, she knew, would always try to do the best things by the best methods available.  Lena, beautiful, imperfect, brilliant Lena.  Lena, who loved her, who knew her, whose body fit next to hers.  How would she ever find anything better than what they had, than what they’d spent ten years building?   


“Sometimes,” Lena went on, “I’m going to do things you don’t like.  You don’t have to like them.  But maybe you can live with them?”

Lena’s hands were warm in hers.  Kara’s heart knew what it wanted.  It wanted to beat next to Lena’s every night.  She quietly thanked her parents for firing her in her tiny pod away from their collapsing world.  She thanked Eliza and Alex and Jeremiah for holding her hand and showing her that there was love in this world, too.  She thanked Cat, for loving her, burning away everything that wasn’t really her, to reveal what lay beneath.   


“I might complain about them a little,” Kara warned.  “Can you stand that?”

Lena pursed her lips.  “As long you’ll still love me at the end of the day.”

“I still love you now.  I never stopped.”

“I know.”

In all the times they’d parted ways, they’d both had their tastes of other lovers, but the shine faded quickly.  Theirs was something built with sweat, and work, and bending, and holding fast.  Theirs was love made strong through struggle, through pulling apart and coming together.

“I love you, Kara,” Lena whispered.  “Let’s not play around anymore.  We’re not getting any younger.  Let’s go to bed.”

“No more lies?”

“No more lies.  I promise.”

Kara set her drink aside, leaned across the table, kissed Lena softly on the lips.  They tasted like gin and tonic.   “Okay,” she whispered against them.  “Let’s go.”   


Lena’s body felt like home.  Her love made Kara’s heart stronger.  They would still fight, yes, but they would never part again.  For all the work it sometimes took, their eyes never lost that low spark when they looked at each other.  Lena was right.  Life was too short to let anything keep them apart.   


And so she took Lena to bed, and laid her down, and kissed every inch of her.  They made love with hearts bared and eyes open.  And they both nearly wept for how right it felt, how powerfully they belonged.  There might be millions of other women in the world, but this one was hers.  And that alone made her beyond compare.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for your patience with me. I really didn't know where I was going when I started writing it but it has been great fun exploring this very human relationship and I have enjoyed reading all your comments along the way. <3


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